Down the stairs walked the girl, feeling that all the wide world was against her.  She would never again try to get a friend.  She had not met a friend except in the desert.  One man had been good to her, and she had let him go away; but he belonged to another woman, and she might not let him stay.  There was just one thing to be thankful for.  She had knowledge of her Father in heaven, and she knew what Christian Endeavor meant.  She could take that with her out into the desert, and no one could take it from her.  One wish she had, but maybe that was too much to hope for.  If she could have had a Bible of her own!  She had no money left.  Nothing but her mother’s wedding-ring, the papers, and the envelope that had contained the money the man had given her when he left.  She could not part with them, unless perhaps some one would take the ring and keep it until she could buy it back.  But she would wait and hope.

She walked by the old butler with her hand on her pistol.  She did not intend to let any one detain her now.  He bowed pleasantly, and opened the door for her, however; and she marched down the steps to her horse.  But just as she was about to mount and ride away into the unknown where no grandmother, be she Brady or Bailey, would ever be able to search her out, no matter how hard she tried, the door suddenly opened again, and there was a great commotion.  The maid and the old butler both flew out, and laid hands upon her.  She dropped the bridle, and seized her pistol, covering them both with its black, forbidding nozzle.

They stopped, trembling, but the butler bravely stood his ground.  He did not know why he was to detain this extraordinary young person, but he felt sure something wrong.  Probably she was a thief, and had taken some of Madam’s jewels.  He could call the police.  He opened his mouth to do so when the maid explained.

“Madam wants you to come back.  She didn’t understand.  She wants to see you and ask about her son.  You must come, or you will kill her.  She has heart trouble, and you must not excite her.”

Elizabeth put the pistol back into its holster and, picking up the bridle again, fastened it in the ring, saying simply, “I will come back.”

“What do you want?” she asked abruptly when she returned to the bedroom.

“Don’t you know that’s a disrespectful way to speak?” asked the woman querulously.  “What did you have to get into a temper for, and go off like that without telling me anything about my son?  Sit down, and tell me all about it.”

“I’m sorry, grandmother,” said Elizabeth, sitting down.  “I thought you didn’t want me and I better go.”

“Well, the next time wait until I send you.  What kind of a thing have you got on, anyway?  That’s a queer sort of a hat for a girl to wear.  Take it off.  You look like a rough boy with that on.  You make me think of John when he had been out disobeying me.”

Elizabeth took off the offending headgear, and revealed her smoothly parted, thick brown hair in its long braid down her back.